The book
An unforgettable story about an unlikely friendship and about healing the wounds of a broken past from the million-copy bestselling author of Fresh Water for Flowers
Justine is 21 years old and has lived with her grandparents and her cousin Jules since the death of her parents. As a nursing assistant at a retirement home, she spends much of her days listening to her residents’ stories.
After bonding with Hélène, an almost 100-year-old resident, the two women slowly reveal their stories to one another. Whilst Justine helps Hélène to relive her memories of love and war, Hélène encourages Justine to confront the secrets of her own past, and the loss she keeps buried deep within.
One day, a mysterious phone detailing a shocking revelation shakes the retirement home to its core. At once humorous and melancholic, Valérie Perrin’s novel depicts the consequences of undeclared love and, in her inimitable way, portrays once again how the past is never really past.
The author
Valérie Perrin
Valérie Perrin was born in 1967 in Remiremont, in the Vosges Mountains, France. She grew up in Burgundy and settled in Paris at the age of nineteen. The international success of her novels Forgotten on Sunday, Fresh Water for Flowers, Three, and Tata has made her one of the most widely read and most beloved French authors in the world. Fresh Water for Flowers (Europa, 2020) won the Maison de la Presse Prize, the Paperback Readers Prize, and was named an ABA Indies Introduce and Indie Next List title. It has been translated into forty languages. In Italy, both Fresh Water for Flowers and Tata (Europa, 2026) were the bestselling books of their respective publication years. In 2025, readers of ELLE named Perrin one of their top ten favorite French authors of all time. Perrin now lives in Paris.